Digitizing Your Genius: Showcase Your Intellectual Property Raising the Barr Weekly Memo: Issue 176

This week’s reflection point: Far too many people have a tremendous amount of knowledge, but fail to share it with the world. Don’t be one of them! It’s incredibly important to “digitize” your intellectual property, manifesting your ideas in podcasts, articles, blogs, videos, e-books, newsletters, and other online media. If you don’t showcase your unique wisdom in this way, it’s a disservice to yourself, to your business, and to those around you.

In fact, failing to digitize your genius is a disserve to the entire world. Consider all the visionaries and thought leaders who came before you. From Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison to Salvador Dali and Leonardo da Vinci, they all made the decision to share their genius with the world. What if, instead, they had shut off their ideas from those around them, and never showcased their amazing intellectual property?

You are a walking gold mine of untapped knowledge. Everything you’ve learned over the years is stuck in your mind—you just need to pull it out, so the world can benefit from it. Today, it’s easier than ever to showcase your ideas by digitizing them. If you’re not actively pulling the genius out of yourself, you need to start now.

Here are four key ways to begin the process:

1. Pay attention to your clients’ conversations. One of the best ways to pull genius from yourself is to listen to your clients. What are your clients talking about? What adversity do they face? What challenges have them overcome? What successes have they achieved? Listen carefully to these topics, and then write articles and blogs, make videos, and create podcasts that address those subjects. Share ideas for how your clients can resolve common problems, reach common goals, and avoid common pitfalls. Once you do, you’ll finally be putting your wisdom out there for others to benefit from.
2. Watch what’s going on in the world. Paying attention to social media, newspapers, magazines, and other news platforms is an amazing way to jumpstart your creation of digitized intellectual property. Respond to the hottest topics of the day, and inject your expertise into the conversation. Share your ideas and knowledge in a provocative way, challenging what others are saying about certain topics. Showcase your unique perspective on current events that relate to your business and your clients’ lives.
3. Schedule quiet time to create content. We all have a space where we feel most creative. Whatever that is for you, schedule time there to clear your head, and think about how your can use your unique ideas to help your organization and those around you. You’ll be able to invent new concepts and decide how to digitize them when you’re in a space dedicated to thinking, without any distractions.
4. Fiercely commit to execution. Digitizing your intellectual property sounds great hypothetically—but you have to actually commit to getting it done. Far too many people think about showcasing their expertise online, but never do it. So mark your calendar with specific due-dates for your content creation, and fiercely commit to executing this worthwhile project. Get it done!

My last bit of advice is to surround yourself with great books, and read often. Don’t limit your reading to present-day authors. Be sure to read books by authors of the past, who are no longer alive, but still share incredible insights with us today. What you read can have a huge influence on your intellectual property. As the old saying goes, “Show me your library, and I’ll show you who you are.”

We all have a responsibility to share our knowledge with the world. Digitize your genius and establish a legacy to leave behind for generations to come. If you’re already doing it—what can be done to raise the bar? And if you’re not—start today!

This week’s tip: It’s time to start digitizing your intellectual property. Establish a legacy of your ideas, benefit those around you, and improve your business, all at once.